


Tyger Tyger

by theumbrellaseller



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2012-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-29 18:30:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theumbrellaseller/pseuds/theumbrellaseller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soon it was Moriarty who stalked the jungles of Moran’s mind at night, who snarled at him from the shadows and hungered for his flesh, and Moran knew that if he let his guard down Moriarty would eat him alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tyger Tyger

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by William Blake's "The Tyger". Nothing is mine. Except maybe Moran's butt tattoo.

_Tyger Tyger, burning bright…_

Not many people know this, but Sebastian Moran didn’t just crawl out of of some shithole in Manchester at the age of eighteen and run into the waiting arms of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. No.  Sebastian Moran spent his early years with a silver spoon in his mouth on an estate well outside the city, with a nanny and a cook and a father who borrowed a little too much and embezzled a little more, and who was shot in the head ( _bang_ ) when Seb was only eight. From then on Moran was a burden to be shifted from foster home to foster home, living in houses that steadily decreased in size like Russian dolls, and soon no-one knew or cared what his last name meant. It was rare that he was in a house with less than six other kids; you got grants, didn’t you, for fostering, and it’s remarkable what people will put up with for a few extra quid. These places were always loud and cramped and angry, and each new home came with its own particular cabbage/soup/damp smell and the occasional pervert . They were no more than way-stations, really; foster care in Manchester was like a giant game of pass the parcel and it didn’t make much difference if the package got damaged along the way. By the time he was fourteen he’d had enough, just walked out of the house he was staying in one day and didn’t look back. No-one stopped him, no-one looked for him. For all he knew they were still being paid for his keep. He was tall for his age, and wiry (“you’re like a long, skinny streak of shit” one of his foster dads said, before Moran knocked his teeth out) and he passed himself off as seventeen with no fuss at all, because no-one cared, and unions were for other people. He spent the next few years of his life just surviving, picking up habits and work and women where he could, and pissing his money away on the dogs and the horses and in the back rooms of pubs where even a tenner was worth more than your life. _Then_ he jumped in bed with the Army.

As it turned out, he was good at everything except following orders.

Moran had had a nanny when he was little, even before his mum died, and every night before bed she’d read to him. Sebastian had a lot of books (and even now he liked to read, reading was like wanking or riding a bike, once you learned you never lost the knack). His nanny read him lots of books, books about heroes and knights and chivalry that he never took to heart (“Why didn’t he just stab him once his back was turned?”) but there was one book little Seb liked the very best, and that was a book with a red cover and a cracked spine, and it was called The Tyger.

It was a poem, rather than a story, but the illustrations were splashed large and lurid across the pages so Seb didn’t mind. The Tyger burned off the paper, insinuated between the sentences, its heavy pants weaving through the rhythm of the poem. Its tail flicked out like a comma as it padded through the lush green ink Forests Of The Night, and all the time the soft voice of his nanny whispered,

 _Tyger Tyger, burning bright…_

Seb was fascinated by the tiger. He’d dream of its blazing redgoldcrimsonorange fur slashed through with black and the rank, feline smell of it. He’d feel its hot breath like a stinking furnace on the back of his neck as it stalked him through the jungle, feel its low growl reverberate through his narrow infant chest. Its eyes were burning topaz staring him down like he was nothing more than a bite and a swallow and then gone, and he would stare into them, quivering, caught between terror and love. It prowled his dreams for his entire life, always just behind him, just above him, just below him, ready to crush his head in its massive jaws, and even when he dreamt sticky wet dreams with slicked skin and warm wet mouths there was always a flash of red-gold at the corner of his eye.

The Tyger was how he survived; that was how he raised the stakes and chased away everyone bigger than him, stronger than him, how he said _no, officer, I don’t know anything about it_ when in fact _it_ was bleeding on his kitchen floor, how he walked into heavy gunfire with a smile on his face and a song his heart and a laugh for every sod who got in the way of his gun– because other than the Tyger he had nothing to fear.

All his life the Tyger hunted him. He was twenty-six when he decided to hunt it right back.

It seemed only right that his first would be in India, a country where his ancestors had bloodied their bayonets on a thousand native rebels.  There had been a Colonel Moran sweating his bollocks off in the country since the Empire was young, and it made him grin with pride to think of how far their heir had fallen.  He walked into the jungle with water, a pack of cigarettes, a knife and a gun, and if the locals laughed at him, they didn’t do so for very long.

It was a week before he found him, a week of bug bites and sleepless nights and cigarettes he couldn’t light in case something smelt the smoke, but then there he was one night at dusk, great head bent, lapping water from a stream. It was if all Moran’s boyhood nightmares had come to life, huge and blazing gold in the setting sun, and he couldn’t breathe. He followed it for days, watching the ripples of tightly coiled muscle beneath the pelt, watching it hunt, learning from it, until finally without warning it turned and charged at the stupid boy who’d fancied himself a hunter. Moran put bullet after bullet in its chest but it wasn’t enough, it just kept coming, six hundred pounds of savage rage that knocked him to the ground as if he were a child. There was a brief, parlayzing moment as he looked into the tiger’s eyes when he felt he was looking into the face of God -- ears pressed flat against its skull, fur matted with gore, the fearful symmetry of its face twisted into a grimace and jaws gaping wide like the mouth of Hell-- before he wrenched his arm upwards and slit its throat. Its face froze in a snarl as its blood poured thick and heady over Moran’s shaking form, and if he’d been a religious man he’d have called it a baptism. He raised a trembling hand and buried it in the tiger’s fur, kissed its nose, felt its limbs jerk, and when at last the spark faded from its eyes he was fearless. It took him almost an hour to wriggle out from underneath the corpse. He lit a long overdue cigarette and resolved to aim for the head next time; being pinned under six hundred pounds of dead tiger was not an experience he was eager to repeat.

He became Sebastian Moran, Tiger-Killer, and it may have been illegal but that had never stopped him before.  He hunted tigers all across Asia and turned it into a talent. He would chase them through the jungle as they chased him when he was a little boy, panting and laughing and filled with the _killkillkill_ instinct, tracking them for weeks, not sleeping, not eating, waiting for them to tire or turn around and fight. He took a tooth from each of them and left their skins out of respect, because he loved them, after all. Moran was always filled with a desire to hurt the things he loved.

When he’d killed his tenth, he had a tattoo of a tiger done on his arse in Thailand, and fucked the artist’s daughters to break it in. The Tyger still appeared in his dreams, but he had killed its kind now, and he felt no fear.

Until Moriarty.

Moran made India too hot to hold him, and fled back to the cool of England without his guns and barely a hundred quid to his name, nothing but his reputation and own ruthlessness to get him back on top. Moriarty must’ve smelled him a mile off. The moment they met (in a dark alley in a warehouse in an office on a roof by the river underground, who can remember anymore?) Moran saw the flash of red-gold fur and the claws and the teeth and the savagery that lurked behind the suit, the poorly-hidden hunger that burned deep and slow like hot coals ( _in what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes?)_ and Moran had always had a lean and hungry look but Moriarty was _ravenous._ He saw the flare in Moriarty’s eyes, the long slow grin as he caught his scent, and in short, he was afraid.

Soon it was Moriarty who stalked the jungles of Moran’s mind at night, who snarled at him from the shadows and hungered for his flesh, and Moran knew that if he let his guard down Moriarty would eat him alive.

But Moran hunted tigers.

It is unknown who drew first blood, but blood flowed all the same. Moriarty prowled the streets of London and Moran followed him, knowing that if he put a foot wrong Moriarty would turn in an instant and tear him to shreds. Moran had never told anyone about his past but Moriarty knew all about him anyway, gleaned information from him as he would suck the marrow from his bones _(in what furnace was thy brain_ ) and when Moran turned and showed him that he had teeth, too, Moriarty threw back his head and laughed ( _What the hand dare seize the fire?_ ) and Moran could see into the pulsing dark red chasm of his throat and knew that one day he would end up there. He was reckless, he was brutal, he followed every command Moriarty threw at him (“bring the car round” “break his kneecaps” “pop down to Leicester Square tonight and fire into the crowd a few times, there’s a dear, fucking tourists”).  Moriarty tried to tame him and Moran rattled the cages ( _What the hammer what the chain_ ) and Moriarty stubbed out cigarettes on Moran’s skin and Moran called him “Jimmy” just for kicks and Moriarty hit him with a crowbar and Moran bared his bloodied teeth and laughed red spittle his face. Half the time he wasn’t sure if he wanted to mount Moriarty’s head on the wall or if he just wanted to mount him; they bit and snarled and spit at each other, and their hunting grounds were the streets and alleys and the wilderness of Moriarty’s flat, carpet jungles and cliffs made of tastefully designed furniture where he trod softly softly so as not to wake the sleeping beast. There would be moments in the still before he pulled the trigger when he’d catch Moriarty looking at him, just looking, with a kind of terrifying  predatory patience that almost made him miss—a knowledge that soon Moran would tire, soon he’d have to give in or turn around and fight.

They crept close and kept their distance but at night Moran couldn’t escape the flash of teeth, the growls like distant thunder that rumbled down his spine, the fevered dreams of Moriarty’s rough tongue dragging across his skin and making him scream -- he woke sweating and hard, and clutched his tiger teeth, and wondered if this was vengeance for killing so many of his kind. They said nothing aloud but it lurked between them, the mutual desire to see each other skinned alive and stretched out on the floor.

Night after night Moran and felt him closing in in the darkness, until finally, _at last,_ he felt his hot breath like a furnace on the back of his neck and he knew that Moriarty wanted to _eat him—_

 _And what shoulder, & what art_

And it felt like having his skin peeled from his bones, like revelation, and he was eight years old again running from an ink and paper Tyger, caught between terror and love—

 _Could twist the sinews of thy heart_

\--and he was twenty-six and pinned to the floor by his first kill, alone in the jungle and looking at death in the terrible eyes of God--

 _And when thy heart began to beat_

\--for Moran was a tiger-killer and he liked to hurt the things he loved—

 _What dread hand? And what dread feet?_

\--and he had hunted tigers but never Tygers—

 _Tyger Tyger burning bright--_

Moriarty opened his jaws and swallowed him whole.

 

 


End file.
